Live
by emoly01
Summary: I met him during the fire. I met him while eating ice cream. I met him while drunk. I met him, and he destroyed me.
He was tall and pale. He had a commanding look. Charcoal hair, long fingers, and round cheeks gave the image of a man in charge, which he was. I hadn't noticed him enter, but I noticed him then, in the white button up and jeans, standing tall above the chaos. Droplets of vodka flung in the air, high above the spill, the spill that was in slow motion catching fire. The flames crawled along the surface of the liquid, casting a shadow across his face, seemingly menacing.

Then all the drunks were out of the bar, and so was the bartender, and I sat calmly on my barstool and sipped my beer. Sweat dripped between my breasts. I could hear his commanding voice, telling me to leave. I looked at him as I took another sip. I looked down at the yellow label, peeling from condensation, to find out what kind of beer I was drinking. Some brew I'd never heard of before, but I liked it. Very hoppy.

He gripped my arm, and fire consumed part of the bar. "Come with me!"

I chugged what was left, stood, and found that the obvious exit was currently obstructed with flames. Smoke filled the air, tingling in my nose and at the bottom of my lungs. He cursed, and turned me around. My eyes stung. He pulled me toward a door that read: EMPLOYEES ONLY. Another sign above it read EXIT in red letters and I thought crazily that the letters ought to blend in with the fire. The door wouldn't open. He slammed his shoulder against it several times, but it was jammed. We would die, caterpillars in a mason jar closed too tightly. I felt dizzy. I found another beer in my hand suddenly and decided to take a sip.

He tugged me close to the ground, where there was less smoke. I could hear sirens outside. His pale skin was smudged with soot, but streaks of sweat left clean trails along his forehead and cheeks. He held his sleeve up to his mouth, and his eyes flickered around the room. I watched the flames on the bar counter complete a ritual dance. I turned to him. "We should take cover." He looked at me, and then up at the bar, just in time for the explosion.

I was on my back. I heard a high, clear ring and not much more. My vision swam; I thought about the pleasant heat around me, the shifting shadows and blurry flames. I turned my head, saw the man lying on his back near the employee closet, or kitchen, or whatever. He wasn't moving. What an idiot, I thought, dying while trying to save me. Faintly, I heard the clinking of glass, which turned out to be another minor explosion.

Arms wrapped around me suddenly, and a firefighter, a woman, lifted me. I closed my eyes and let the hot breeze sift through my hair. I wondered where my beer went. I opened my eyes once shocking, cold winter air hit my face. It made me cough. I saw the charcoal haired man in a fireman's carry. He squinted back at me and then closed his eyes. Snowflakes swayed before me.

I've only ever heard people complain about the sterile scent of hospitals, and maybe the paper dresses that expose your butt. This being my first time in the hospital, the scent didn't bother me, nor did the paper dress. I mean, my butt is great. My legs were stiff, like rusty bike chains. My head ached dully, but that had been constant for the past month or so, since I'd arrived, so I didn't think about it much anymore. I was uninjured, except for a concussion, which I'd already recovered from, and second degree partial thickness burns on half of my chest, neck, and the lower right quarter of my face.

Currently, I was sitting up in bed, reading the nutrition facts of the hospital sandwich. Too many carbs, not enough protein, too much sodium. I picked at the label as I read. Outside of my room, I heard footsteps, then a voice. "Well, then, I guess I'm the first." The door opened. I looked up. He looked much better than he had in that firefighter carry. As a matter of fact, he looked like he hadn't been injured at all. His hair glistened; his skin unblemished; his posture impeccable, a real homo sapien, none of that caveman hunch.

He smiled and sat down by my pristine sheets. "I thought I'd visit," he said.

I held out my burned hand; it was healed, but scarred. "Liv."

He shook it. "Roy."

I offered him a bite of my sandwich and he declined.

"How are you holding up?" he asked as I bit into my sandwich. I gave him a thumbs up as a way of answering, and he smiled and asked when I was going to be released from the hospital. I said through a mouthful of carbs that I didn't know. We stopped talking. He was wearing a blue uniform, his elegant fingers entwined. His lip twitched every couple of minutes, and he would inhale sharply each time, then exhale quietly. I finished my sandwich and tossed the plastic into the garbage can. I could almost hear a swoop and the cheer of a crowd for making it into the basket. Instead, I heard, "I'm sorry for not saving you."

I looked at him. He was looking at his hands. "No," I said. "You should be sorry for trying to save me." He looked up sharply, and I thought that those eyes could scorch me worse than that explosion had. "You broke the first rule of nature, Roy: survive. You put my life before your own." I gave him a _tsk tsk_ , and he frowned. Sunlight, warm and bright, streamed onto the starchy hospital sheets.

"I don't think that's something to apologize for," he said softly. "What were you doing, anyway, sitting like that in the middle of a crisis?"

I smoothed the sheets over my legs. "Breaking the first rule of nature, obviously."

He sighed. "You're crazy."

"So are you."

After a moment of silence, he stood up and smiled down at me, like a sunbeam. "It's nice to meet you, Liv. I hope you get better soon." I thanked him for the visit, said my farewells, and watched his firm butt as he left. I was discharged later that day.

I intentionally allowed the soft served ice cream to drip down the one side not facing me, and licked only the one side to see if anyone would notice, and if they did notice, I wanted to know if it bothered them. A small child, pigtails, told me my cone was dripping. I thanked her, let the ice cream drip onto my jeans, and she asked why my face was wrinkled. I told her I was a witch that melted ice cream for fun and she left me alone.

Then he sat next to me. "Scaring away my niece?"

I smiled at him. "Roy. I took you for an only child."

"She's my best friend's kid."

"So you are an only child?"

He offered me a napkin. I cleaned up my jeans and licked my fingers. I offered him my ice cream. He declined. The sun passed its zenith, and the summer heat lowered to a simmer as a cloud cast a shadow on our bench."How did your burns heal up?" I told him that I'd forgotten I was burned in the first place, and this made him shift his weight uncomfortably. His eyes followed his niece, and my eyes strayed on his face. I wondered if his lips were as sweet as the ice cream. Of course they'd be warmer, and not literally sweet. They would probably more salty than anything else, but what was wrong with that? Especially if they were salty with the sweat of-

"With the way you're staring, you'd think I was the scarred one."

"Why are you obsessed with my scars?"

"I could have prevented them."

"No," I said flatly and stood. "I was going to burn in that bar no matter what." He looked up at me, but I couldn't smile down at him like a sunbeam, the way he had for me. I could only feel a little melancholy. He asked me why no one had visited me in the hospital. I licked my ice cream and turned so that I could see his niece grabbing her own ice cream cone from a slim woman with honey hair, a woman dressed in muted browns and purples, like an old lady or a widow. She was colorless, not stark like Roy. He asked me if I had any family. I finished my cone and tossed the napkin in the garbage a few feet away. Again, the swoosh and the cheering crowd.

"Liv?" he said, uncertainly.

"Chronic heros piss me off." I took a step forward. He grabbed my scarred hand.

"You are crazy... aren't you?"

I shook my hand from his grip and left.

The next time I saw him, he was blurry, holding my wrists tightly, and shoving me into the drunk tank. The room smelled like piss. The time after that, he arrested me shortly after one in the morning. We were sitting in the interrogation room, not that I needed to be interrogated. There was that big reflective window, the fluorescent light above my head, accenting the shadows on my face and the large purple bruises on my left eye and jaw. A cup of hot coffee sat before me, steaming, black. I stared at my reflection.

Roy came in, wearing his blue uniform. He sat across from me, obstructing my view. I leaned forward and rested my chin in my scarred hand. He held out two packets of sugar, which I ignored. Then the questions came. "How long have you been fighting illegally? Who organizes these events? Are you a regular? Who else fights? Who's your sponsor? You know, the more questions you ignore, the longer you'll be in here and the more suspicious you become. This organization of yours is connected to something larger..." and so on. Eventually, he stopped talking, and we sat in silence. He looked commanding, the same way he had the night of the fire, his jaw set firmly and every facial muscle under strict control, a flawless machine.

I sat back, opened the packets of sugar, stirred them into my coffee. His eyes never left mine and I wished he would look at me that way in a different context, the both of us on opposite ends of the bar on a Saturday night, close to eleven o'clock, the light purple and dim, the din of the bar the soundtrack to a love story. I picked up my cup, held it out to my right, and slowly poured the contents onto the floor. His gaze never left mine, and I felt like maybe I really was insane; what was I doing in illegal fight clubs (what movie is that again), why couldn't I just tell him, if I did would he please do me right here on this table... My vision swam. A chill went up my spine. My mouth went dry, like I bit directly into an unripe persimmon.

His fingers made a small steeple, his elbows on the table. I felt color high in my cheeks.

He gave in a few minutes later. "You'll have to clean that up, you know."

I tilted my head. Why was I so dizzy? "How's your niece, Roy-boy?"

His lips drew into a tight line. "She's fine."

"And the widow is fine, too?"

"Yes."

I nodded and looked up at the ceiling, sinking down in my chair so I could rest my head back. My knees touched his. He didn't move. I wanted to kick off my shoes and rub my foot against the inside of his leg... "Roy-boy," I said, and then didn't say. Neither did he. "I think I'm going to sleep." And then I was.

I was vomiting, and simultaneously sweating, aching, swallowing water convulsively, wiping my brow, rolling on the floor, vomiting, groaning, crying, refusing to eat, gorging myself. It lasted two minutes. It lasted a year. Suddenly, I was sober for the first time I could remember, and I didn't feel clean. I felt haggard. My insides had been carved and raked out, then dumped back inside of my skin unceremoniously. I was tired, I was disgusting, and I was thinking clearly. More importantly, I was back in the fighting ring.

Sweat flung off my opponent's shoulder. I ducked under his fist and landed a couple solid ones on his flank. His skin and muscle jiggled at the impact. The ring of people around us screamed, and his next punch glanced my jaw. I took the punch because he left himself open after landing a hit. I hooked his flank three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and then his face was open and I jabbed five, six, seven - the bell rang; he sagged in his chair; I drank some water, feeling perky and grim. I couldn't see into the darkness surrounding us. I could only see within the circle of light that highlighted the event.

We were let back at each other. He landed solidly, immediately, on my temple. I stumbled back, breathed heavily, and heard someone yell that women shouldn't be allowed. I shook off my disorientation, threw a few jabs that didn't land, and hooked him again in the flank. I reached twenty nine combo punches at some point during the fight. I didn't knock him out, and he never gave up, but I was the faster and did the most damage. His face put me in mind of oatmeal with whole blueberries: lumpy, pasty, with a splash of purple here and there. I felt no worse for wear, probably could have gone another couple of rounds. He was breathing heavily and could barely stand when he was named the victor.

I left the cool basement in favor of the city streets, a cool autumn breeze lifting my body heat from me. Goosebumps raised on my bare shoulders. Roy appeared at my shoulder, offering a jacket, which I declined. "Find what you need?" I asked. He said no, then told me it was a good fight, and that I should go professional. I reminded him that my scars disqualified me. He told me I should join the force, then. I told him to go fuck himself. He offered to buy me coffee.

We sat across from each other in the dark, right outside the coffee shop, steam rising like pheromones from my styrofoam cup. I looked at the stars. "I want to be a stewardess." I met his quizzical gaze and tapped my fingers on the table. "I'm pretty enough, right?" He drew both of his hands off the table and agreed that I was pretty. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No."

"Do you want one?"

"I have to go." And then he was.

It was summer again when he finally got his big break. I was in the middle of smashing a dude's face in, and doing it real smooth too, when a blond boy wearing a bright red jacket jumped into the ring and yelled at the crowd that they were under arrest, that the building was surrounded. I landed another solid punch on my opponent before we both drew back to our respective corners. The building was, in fact, surrounded. I thought damn it, this is my big break, and then crossed my arms. The lights turned off. People screamed. A scuffle broke out, and broke off as soon as uniformed men piled into the basement and waved their guns around. A couple of lights turned back on, dim ones, and it took hours to arrest everyone.

Roy was busy that night, but I had the opportunity to ask blondie what exactly they were arresting everyone for again, and he glared at me. "Sex-trafficking and smuggling drugs, numbnuts." I thought that I was surprised, but I went home feeling too sober and fell asleep too quickly.

A more genuine surprise overcame me when I answered my phone a month later and Roy was on the other end. He asked if he could come over. I looked around at my apartment. The carpet hadn't been cleaned since I got the place; there were bloody bandages in the open garbage can; beer bottles littered the coffee table; my clothes sprawled out on the ground. I told him he could come over whenever he wanted.

I had taken a shower and drunk two beers by the time he showed up, and none of my clothes or bottles were put away. He knocked twice. I called from the stained blue couch that he could come in, and he opened the door. He was wearing a white button-up and jeans again. I put my bare feet on the table, aware I wore only booty shorts and a tanktop, no underwear. He closed the door behind him.

"How're you doing?" he asked, glancing around.

I shrugged and took a swig of beer. I offered him a sip and he declined. He sat down next to me on the couch, relaxing pretty quickly for someone who had never been to my apartment before. He didn't put his feet up, but he put his arms on the back of the couch. His fingers brushed my shoulder. "I thought I'd see what you were up to," he said, "since we only ever used to see each other for work and now we're not working together anymore. It's kind of lonely." I hummed, wondering if I'd felt similarly.

"I don't know how to feel lonely," I decided out loud and finished my beer.

He hummed in agreement. I turned my head to look at him. He was looking at me, too.

"I don't know how to feel friendly, either," I reminded him.

He hummed again, then asked if he could kiss me. I told him I didn't know how to feel sexy or how to be in love, but he kissed me. His tongue slipped in my mouth. We were on my couch, up against the wall at a club, in his plush bed, pressed against my shower wall. We were kissing, fucking, scratching, moaning, grabbing, sucking, licking, fucking, fucking, fucking. Then I was standing next to Roy in the entrance of a bar, staring at a table of people with blue uniforms in varying states of undress.

"These are my friends on the force," Roy said to me, and I wondered why he thought I should meet them. We sat at the table with them (it was two tables pushed together actually), and I drank exactly one beer. The condensation on the glass weakened the adhesive on the label. I didn't like this yellow brand. Too hoppy. I thought I recognized the blond woman who was drinking only water, but I didn't know from where. I definitely recognized the blond man with the red jacket, who was also not drinking, but seemed to be having a good time shouting and slamming his fists on the table. Another blond man, also not drinking, tried to placate red-jacketed blond. A third blond man smoked a cigarette and slurred drunkenly at me. A fat redhead yelled in the smoking man's ear. Both turned to look at a dark-haired man with thick-framed glasses, who had passed out on the table. A grey-haired man gently shook the passed out man.

The smoking man leaned over to me and touched my leg. I punched him in the face and the deafening noises came to a sudden halt with the sound of him crashing to the floor. I felt their eyes on me, all of them, surprised and scrutinizing me. I forgot Roy was there, that these were his friends. "Don't fucking touch me." My voice was a low growl. The smoking man stared up at me, still in surprise.

"Liv?" Roy said, and I remembered where I was.

I turned toward the exit, flipped them the bird, and went home. Roy came over the next day and we screwed on the kitchen counter. The next time I met Roy's friends, he and I were getting married, and I hated them all. Roy was promoted; I stayed at home and drank. Roy brought his friends over for poker night and I stayed in our bedroom. Roy tried to cheer me up, and I told him to shut up and screw me already. Then he was a General, and I was a housewife, and I drank too much, and he spent his time happily at work. Suddenly at forty, I was an old junkie and I didn't know where I lived and I hadn't seen my husband for seven years. He was apparently someone important. I was lying on the sidewalk, rain pounding on my face, bottle in hand, eyes closed. I asked myself who I was, trying to remember something important. And then I fell asleep, better off on my own but wet.


End file.
